Next, the LAFPC hopes to pass a policy that offers legal protections to street vendors who sell fresh fruits and vegetables. Other cities and counties are also leading the way. San Diego County has invested in greater access to farmers’ markets and fresh produce for its low-income residents. Sonoma County has passed a quarter cent sales tax to ensure preservation of its agriculture assets in recognition that food and farming are essential to urban resilience. San Francisco passed a local ordinance in 2011 to support urban agriculture, inspiring the city’s state Assemblyman, Phil Ting, to create a state law (AB 551) in 2013 that does the same using tax incentives.

These local policy developments are important, but they must migrate up to the state level. The verdict from the California Food Policy Council report is that our legislature can do much more.

Though Governor Brown signed a handful of important bills last fall such as the aforementioned Ting bill and AB 224 that supports Community Supported Agriculture operations, many opportunities continue to be overlooked. California’s underinvestment in our food system continues, as not one bill provided farmers and ranchers with incentives for protecting soil, water or biodiversity.

Vital University of California research programs, like the Biologically Integrated Farming Systems program that led to huge breakthroughs for the winegrape and almond industries and could do the same for many others, have been cut for years. In the midst of a terrible drought and projections of climate chaos, AB 823, a policy that would promote farmland protection as a carbon sequestration strategy, was killed in the Assembly Agriculture Committee. Worst of all, the beverage industry and legislators have kept SB 622, which could help reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by funding healthy food access for low-income families, trapped in Appropriations because they are reluctant to raise taxes on sweetened beverages.

This year is the UN’s International Year of the Family Farmer. It is the hope of the California Food Policy Council that 2014 will also be the year that the State of California joins the United Nations in identifying family farms and food systems as a cornerstone for health and resilience in the 21st Century. It is our hope that several other states across the nation will join us. Together we can show Congress how a new set of policies can guide development of food and farming to be economically beneficial, ecologically regenerative and deliciously healthy.